Water bottles handed out to participants in a vigil in Greeley last week and a march last May, treats handed out to Somali kids living in Weld County and the search for interpreters fluent in the languages of Burma and Bhutan all are part of the U.S. Census Bureau's efforts to find its way to hard-to-count populations in Colorado.

The census will begin its once-a-decade count in March, and the bureau is working to make sure new immigrants and other peer groups wary of government are included in the tally. The numbers make a difference to communities because the counts are used to determine funding for things as varied as schools and social services.

"Our recruiting efforts have been very successful so far," said Cathy Lacy, director for the Denver Regional Census Center. "But there are areas we need to focus on, where we need people who speak a particular language and understand the culture."

In Greeley, for example, the bureau has been developing partnerships with local groups such as Al Frente de Lucha to encourage immigrants, whether in Colorado legally or illegally, not to fear filling out census forms next March, said census partnership specialist Sonny Subia.

The census questionnaire does not ask about legal status.

"There is some fear," Subia said. "And an ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement office) is opening up next month here."

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To help remove some of that fear, the Census Bureau co-sponsored the immigration rally in early May and gave bags to marchers, Subia said.

"We co-sponsored that to try to raise awareness and show some of the communities we are partnering with them," he said. "It was just branding the census."

Last Saturday, the bureau handed out water bottles during a vigil remembering the third anniversary of the ICE raid on the Swift & Co. plant in Greeley.

Spanish-speaking radio stations will air folk songs with lyrics geared toward the census, and a popular Spanish soap opera has inserted a census worker into its show on Telemundo, he said.

Somali immigrants are another hard-to-reach group, said Graen Isse, director of the East African community center in Greeley.

"Most of them do not read and write, so there will be somebody to help them understand the forms" at the center, Isse said.

This year during Ramadan, census workers were front and center at events, handing out candies and balloons, he said.

The Census Bureau also has to overcome mistrust of government by newly arrived refugees from Bhutan and Burma, census specialist Peter Seung Woo Lee said.

"They were actually kicked out of their country by their government," Lee said.

The bureau is still looking for interpreters and hopes to join with groups helping the refugees settle in Colorado to get them to fill out the forms.

"They don't even know what 'census' means," Lee said. "They had been living in the refugee camps or in the mountains, hiding from the government."

Counting the homeless is another challenge, Lacy said.

She said census officials began working a year ago with local governments, shelters and soup kitchens to identify locations and street hangouts.

On March 29 and 30, census workers will descend on those sites to count the homeless. They will even know the best times to arrive at each site to find the most people, she said.

In addition, census workers will canvas hotels and motels between March 22 and April 17 looking for units that serve as permanent housing for transients, she said.

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